The RIAA's latest report indicates that market share for classical music was up just a tick in 1999, to 3.5 percent from the previous year's 3.3 percent, while jazz rebounded, climbing from a dismal 1.9 percent in 1998 to a respectable 3 percent in 1999. (In 1990, jazz hit a high of 4.8 percent.) Yet at a time of runaway music sales among those age 45 and older -- mellowing music fans who presumably would embrace more soothing sounds -- shouldn't jazz and classical be experiencing a renaissance, rather than just hanging on? The answer may simply be that boomers are wed to the R&B and rock they grew up on and are in no hurry to browse the aisles in search of Kronos Quartet or Steve Tyrell.

"Those 45-plus shoppers, they're still buying pop records," reports Joe Kvidera, manager of a Tower Records shop in Chicago. "People who grew up with the Rolling Stones can still buy Rolling Stones albums because they keep putting them out, or Black Crowes records, which sound just like the Rolling Stones."

Which could spell real trouble for the jazz and classical world.

In May, BMG Entertainment folded its legendary classical label, RCA Victor, along with its longtime jazz label, BMG Classics -- home to Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Rollins recordings -- into an umbrella label called RCA Music Group. The move didn't simply cost nearly 100 employees, and scores of artists, their jobs. It also sent the message that some major labels already view jazz and classical as rearview-mirror commodities.

"Jazz as some of us know it and love it won't be played out on the major-label level anymore," predicts one record company V.P. "The economics have made it impossible for these big companies to give a shit anymore. It's totally a question of commerce. BMG is getting out of the front-line business and zeroing in on catalog, and that's where most of the majors are going." The main problem? "Both are genres living off their old stuff," says Kvidera.

Sure, mainstream shoppers make occasional exceptions to the rule. Ubiquitous Italian pop-opera singer Andrea Bocelli has sold millions of records in recent years. And thanks to her cross-promotion with Ford Motor Co., teenage Welsh soprano Charlotte Church has gone platinum with her American debut, "Voice of an Angel."

On the jazz side, a rare million-dollar marketing campaign has helped sultry blond vocalist and pianist Diana Krall dominate Billboard's No. 1 jazz spot for 43 weeks running with her latest, "When I Look in Your Eyes." (The Verve CD even managed to peak on the pop charts at No. 59.) But has Krall's crossover stardom created more jazz fans? No, says Tom Evered, G.M. and senior vice president for Verve competitor Blue Note. "Chances are, if they like Diana Krall they go buy the Diana Krall record. It's a personality thing, as opposed to an art form."

The biggest hurdle seems to be education. "Acquired interests like jazz and classical -- consumers don't know how to enter those genres. They're confusing," explains Joe Rapolla, vice president of consumer information and label marketing at Universal Music Group.

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